Armstrong says he's still Tour de France king

Associated Press

Updated 11:51 pm, Friday, June 28, 2013

Porto Vecchio, Corsica -- Lance Armstrong made himself the uninvited guest at the Tour de France on Friday, coming back to haunt the 100th edition of the race and infuriating riders past and present by talking at length in a newspaper interview about doping in the sport.

Armstrong told Le Monde that he still considers himself the record holder for Tour victories, even though all seven of his titles from 1999 to 2005 were stripped from him last year for doping.

He said his life has been ruined by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency investigation that exposed as lies his years of denials that he and his teammates doped. He also took another swipe at cycling's top administrators, darkly suggesting that they could be brought down by other skeletons in the sport's closet.

None of those comments broke new ground, but in answering questions from Le Monde - a newspaper he scorned when he was still competing - Armstrong ensured that his views on doping at the Tour would have maximum impact in France and couldn't easily be written off as sour grapes being hurled at the race from afar. The respected daily is very much France's newspaper of record. Its interview with the rider and his assertion that doping won't be eradicated from cycling dominated French airwaves ahead of the race start Saturday, causing dismay and anger in a sport desperate to prove that it has turned the page on his era of serial cheating.

The Tour's director, Christian Prudhomme, suggested that Armstrong was milking the race's notoriety to further his own agenda.

"This is a very big tournament. Just look around: There are 2,300 accredited journalists here, there are cameras everywhere. So if someone wanted to transmit a message, this is the time obviously, especially since everyone likes this kind of controversial statements," he said.

Armstrong's comments and the consternation they caused highlighted cycling's dilemma: It is a sport fighting to give itself a cleaner, brighter future by combatting drug cheats, but much of that good work is being overshadowed by the dirty secrets of past dopers.

Pre-Tour, a drip-drip-drip of doping confessions and revelations about the Armstrong era have rained on the sport. Armstrong's former rival on French roads, 1997 Tour winner Jan Ullrich, admitted to blood-doping for the first time. French media also reported that a Senate investigation into the effectiveness of anti-doping controls pieced together evidence of drug use at the 1998 Tour by Laurent Jalabert, a former star of the race now turned broadcaster.

Armstrong's claim that it was "impossible" to win the Tour without doping in his era echoed what he already told U.S. television talk show host Oprah Winfrey in January, when he finally confessed. Then, he said doping was "part of the job." The banned hormone erythropoietin, or EPO, wasn't detectable by cycling's doping controls until 2001 and so was widely abused because it prompts the body to produce oxygen-carrying red blood cells, giving a big performance boost to endurance athletes.

"The Tour is a test of endurance where oxygen is decisive," Le Monde quoted Armstrong as saying.

Asked later by the Associated Press to clarify his comments, Armstrong confirmed on Twitter that he was talking solely about the period from 1999 to 2005. He indicated that doping might not be necessary now.

At a glance

What: 100th Tour de France.

When: Saturday through July 21.

Riders: 198 are scheduled to compete.

Distance: More than 2,100 miles.

Stages: 21 race days with two rest days (July 8 and July 15). The team time trial returns to the Tour in Stage 4. Two individual time trials in Stages 11 and 17, with the latter coming before three days in the Alps, which may have more impact on the race outcome.

Course: The race spends three days on Corsica's winding, hilly roads, then begins a counterclockwise run through mainland France along the Mediterranean, into the Pyrenees mountains, then up to Brittany and the fabled Mont-Saint-Michel island citadel before a slashing jaunt southeastward toward the Alps and then entering the capital with a rare nighttime finish on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

Riders to watch: Chris Froome, Alberto Contador and U.S. rider Teejay Van Garderen. Last year's winner, Bradley Wiggins, is injured and will not defend his title.